Careers

Strategic Issues

Our Work

The federal government faces a range of challenges in the 21st century, including the nation’s large and growing long-term fiscal imbalances and an aging and more diverse population. Given these challenges, the federal government needs to engage in a comprehensive review, reassessment, reprioritization, and, as appropriate, re-engineering of what the federal government does, how it does business, who does its business, and how government is financed. The Strategic Issues team focuses on the federal government’s role in achieving national goals in an increasingly networked environment and its ability to deliver, and ensure accountability for, meaningful results.

To accomplish our mission, we work independently, with other GAO teams, and with a broad range of "good government" organizations to assist Congress in addressing the governance challenges of the 21st century and directly support GAO’s efforts to establish partnerships with leading innovators who also can help address these challenges. We also periodically report on areas within the federal government that we have identified as high risk because of their greater vulnerabilities to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement, as well as areas needing broad-based transformation to address major economy, efficiency, or effectiveness challenges.

Our work focuses on

analyzing the government’s fiscal position and opportunities to strengthen approaches to address the current and projected fiscal gap and

supporting congressional oversight of major management challenges and program risks